Myan Calendar

The Myan Calendar

The Ancient Maya maintained a very complex calendar system composed of two calendar cycles.

A complete cycle of the entire calendar would take 52 years in our time concept.

The first calendar cycle is called the Sacred Round of 260 days.

This calendar can be further broken down into two cycles.

Cycle one is made up of the numbers one through 13 and cycle two is composed of 20 different day names.

These cycles combine to provide each day with both a name and number that repeat in intervals of 13 or 20, respectively.

This calendar cycle has been found to have started on August 13, 3114 BC – this date is considered to be day zero by the Maya and the date when the current Maya period began.

The second calendar cycle is called the Vague Year of 365 days.

This calendar is very similar to our solar year calendar.

The 365 days are divided into 18 months of 20 days each plus a month of 5 days at the end of the year.

The 5 day month is felt to be a period of bad luck.

The Maya ignore the fractional day that occurs each year (which results in a leap year for us every four years) and this has caused the calendar to drift somewhat and is the reason for the name of Vague Year calendar.

Besides the complex two cycle calendar, the Ancient Mayans used glyphs to represent periods of time.

This method of determining the time period was called the Long Count.

The starting point of the long count was also the originating date of the current Maya era on August 13, 3114 BC.

The glyphs can be depicted as follows:

1 Baktun = 20 Katun = 144,000 days

1 Katun = 20 Tun = 7,200 days

1 Tun = 18 Winal = 360 days

1 Winal = 20 Kin = 20 days

1 Kin =1 day

For instance, Monday, January 1, 1996, was 1,865,799 days after the starting date, or 12 Baktun, 19 Katun, 2 Tun, 13 Winal, and 19 Kin.

This number would be written as 12.19.2.13.19.

There are three all-numerical methods that are now in common use.

Consider February 15, 1998.

It is shown as:

mm/dd/yy (2/15/87)

dd/mm/yy (15/2/98)

yy/mm/dd (98/2/15)

Unfortunately, the early years of the next century will be shown as 00 for 2000, 01 for 2001 etc.

Much confusion will be created.

For example, consider 01 02 03.

Does it mean January 2, 2003 or

1 February, 2003

or 2001 Feb 3?

This problem will continue, in diminished form, until the year 2032.

This is one of the reasons why we always try to use the unusual convention of a 4 digit year, three letter month and two number day, on this site.

(e.g.1998-FEB-15).

That is a clear and unambiguous system..